Chapter 4 - The Ambush in the Obsidian Ballroom
The first shot shattered the central crystal chandelier.
A heavy rain of razor-sharp glass crashed onto the dance floor as screams erupted across the ballroom. The lights were killed instantly, plunging the Aster Room into pitch darkness punctuated only by the strobing muzzle flashes of automatic rifles firing from the upper mezzanine.
Vincent instantly grabbed Penelope by the waist, intending to shield her with his body and drag her behind the overturned marble buffet table. "Get down!" he roared.
He expected her to scream. He expected panic.
Instead, Penelope shoved him down behind the solid marble barrier and reached under the emerald silk of her gown. With a smooth, practiced motion, she whipped a suppressed Walter PPK from a concealed thigh holster.
"Keep your head down, Romano!" she commanded.
Before Vincent could even draw his own weapon, Penelope leaned out from behind the marble pillar, acquired her targets in the dark, and fired three double-taps in rapid succession.
Phut. Phut. Phut.
Up on the mezzanine, two snipers plummeted over the gilded railing, crashing lifelessly onto the tables below.
"Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?!" Vincent yelled over the roar of gunfire, pulling his own customized Sig Sauer from his jacket and taking down a gunman flanking their left.
"Sunday school," Penelope deadpanned, ejecting an empty magazine and slapping a fresh one home in under a second without taking her eyes off the shadows. "Two hostiles moving toward the kitchen corridor. They're cutting off the private exit!"
A towering mercenary dressed in black tactical gear burst through the smoke, raising a shotgun directly at Vincent’s chest. Vincent’s gun clicked empty on an unexpected jam.
In a flash of emerald silk, Penelope surged forward. She ducked beneath the mercenary's barrel, swept his lead leg with blinding speed, drove her stiletto heel straight through his foot, and snapped his wrist with a brutal, sickening crack. As the man screamed in agony, she ripped the shotgun from his hands, butt-stroked his jaw into splintered bone, and spun around to level the weapon at the service doors.
The remaining assassins, seeing their squad decimated in less than forty seconds by a woman in a backless evening gown, retreated into the service corridors.
Sirens wailed in the distance. The survivors in the ballroom were scrambling in pure terror, but Vincent stood motionless in the smoke, staring at his secretary.
Her emerald gown was dusted with drywall powder, a faint smear of blood was on her bare shoulder, and her hazel eyes burned with absolute, cold-blooded lethal dominance.
She lowered the shotgun, blew a stray lock of hair from her forehead, and adjusted her emerald necklace.
"We need to leave," she said calmly, tossing the shotgun to the floor. "The Chicago police will be here in three minutes, and your underboss Gregory is nowhere to be found."
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Vincent’s eyes narrowed dangerously. "Gregory?"
"He left through the kitchen ninety seconds before the first shot was fired," Penelope said, stepping over a body and extending her hand to him. "Your right-hand man sold you out, Vincent. Now are you going to stand there admiring my dress, or are we going to go kill the people who tried to murder us?"
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